An Odd Day In the Life of Hermione Snape
by corvusdraconis
Summary: Hermione Snape is having one of those days. Prompts for: Pride of Portree One shot.


**Summary:** A day in the life of Professor Hermione Granger-Snape.

**A/N: Main Prompts:** 1) All is fair in love and war 2) Severus pile

**Optional prompts: **3) (quote) "People have an annoying habit of remembering things they shouldn't." - Christopher Paolini, Eragon

**Forced prompts:** (word) beginning, (dialogue) "You have about as much charm as a flobberworm."

**Beater 1:** Writing for Beater 2's favourite pairing HG/SS

**Beta love to:** fluffpanda

**Proxy beta, dragged in kicking and screaming:** Story-Please

**An Odd Day in the Life of Hermione Snape**

Professor and Mistress of Transfiguration Hermione Snape was standing at the front of her semi-comatose class wondering if they were going to turn spontaneously into stone statuaries. She figured if they at least turned themselves into aardvarks, she could be more amused at the goings on of her class. Instead, her overly sleepy class was completely and utterly blank in the face, managed to botch basic transformations of matchstick to needle, and one student managed to change their partner into a piece of asparagus. It would have been beyond impressive if they could figure out how to change the poor witch back.

Silently thanking her Mistress of uncounted years, she said a soft prayer of thanks to Minerva McGonagall for teaching her all of the random things she would need to keep her classes from blowing up in her face. In the beginning, Hermione confessed to herself and to a certain Potion Master, she had the teaching demeanour of a rampaging hippogriff in a wand shop. Her teaching style was now a bit of her two mentors, Minerva McGonagall and Severus Snape. One taught her patience. The other taught her how not to be used as a doormat due to her own desire to be helpful.

She was thankful that her years spent as Minerva's apprentice had helped keep her sanity. It did keep her students from doing horrible things to each other in the name of science, magic, or whatever it was that children think of when they decide to turn their lab partner into vegetable and believe it's a great idea.

The bell rang for the end of class, and she knew the class was completely incoherent when they didn't even try to gather their books up to leave a few minutes before class end. All of them were sort of lurking about like crocodiles in the river waiting for some wandering wildebeest to come trundling by.

Waving her hand to shoo them all way, she stared at them as they sort of blankly stared back. She could almost see the drool coming out of the side of their mouth. Her lip curled up from one side of her mouth, and she straightened her posture, pulling her outer robe around her like another certain professor of Hogwarts. She Occluded her mind, so her eyes darkened and glared across the classroom with silent malevolent eyes.

Students went flying out of the room as if their robes were on fire, and Hermione caught herself sniffing out of one side of her nose in disdain. Perhaps he had been spending too much time having tea with a certain Dark wizard. She looked down at her black robes and sighed. Pot meet cauldron.

Waving her wand to ward the room, she exited, but not before she ended up tripping on a book that had someone been left behind in the middle of the doorway. Glaring down at the offending book in manner that was both accusatory and resigned, she picked it up. As she picked up the the book, a photograph fell out from between the pages.

Hermione grasped the photo in her fingers, staring at it. It was of one of her students that liked to hide away in the back. Miss… Thornton if her memory served. Miss Thornton seemed like an amiable sort, as far as she could tell, but she was utterly shy. The photo was, oddly enough, of Miss Thornton in Muggle clothes. She was wearing some strange perversion of a witches costume as seen in the Wizard of Oz. Green skin tone, black pointed hat, warts, long nose like Madam Pince… okay well, the pointed hat and long nose could be seen in real life, she had to admit, but the garish striped stockings and emerald green skin not so much.

She flipped the photo over. Printed in almost bibulous handwriting in permanent marker were the words "People have an annoying habit of remembering things they shouldn't." Hermione lifted an eyebrow. Christopher Paolini, if she remembered her Muggle fiction correctly. He wrote some fiction about dragons in a book called Eragon. Hermione wasn't sure if the photo was a memento of some sort, or perhaps a kind of blackmail. Her left eyebrow went shooting up into her hair as she stared at it. Blackmail, most likely, she decided.

She tucked the odd photo into the book and closed it upon it. Undoubtedly Miss Thornton would want her book back. It was only a matter of time. She closed the door as she walked out, set the wards down over it, and walked down the corridors. Many students were scurrying down the hallways with due haste, attempting with various success in not running, lest they become targets of docked points.

As she continued her walk down the hallway, she found herself staring at a patch of floor that was covered with a strange assortment of shoes and socks. Instincts honed from countless years knowing Fred and George Weasley sent every hair upon her head straight up. Wishing to test her hypothesis without using her shoe, she pulled a small rubber ball she had confiscated from one of her students and sent it bouncing down the hall.

SPLAT!

The ball was sucked into the floor like glue.

Hermione ran her tongue across her upper teeth with a humming sound. Well, this was different.

"This is your fault, you gnome-faced ninny hammer!" a male voice screamed from down the hall.

"Me?" another voice yelled back. "How in bloody hell is this MY fault?"

"If it weren't for your happy little prank war with Astrid, my shoes and socks wouldn't be stuck to this Merlin-cursed floor!" the other voice yelled.

"I didn't bloody well jinx the floor into glue—AH! NO!"

There was a splatting sound and curses.

"Merlin take you, Geoffrey! When I get out of this, I'm going to rearrange your face, so you never get a date with Astrid!"

"At least I have natural charm," Geoffrey yelled. "It won't matter what I look like. That prank I set up in the Potions laboratory is going make her fall in love with me!"

"You have about as much charm as a flobberworm, Geoffrey," the other student hissed. "And, Merlin help me, I'm going to prove it to you!"

Hermione had heard enough, even as amused as she was as the less than witty repartee was being exchanged. She waved her wand and counter-charmed the floor of the corridor, setting free the shoes, socks, and the two "friends" that had been trapped in the glue floor.

"Tell me, Mr. Raffordy, Mr. Withers," Hermione said with a stone-faced expression. "At what point did you decide that turning the halls of Hogwarts into adhesive a good plan?"

Geoffrey Withers had the decency to look abashed. Kirk Rafferty was looking quite murderously at his friend.

Friend seems somewhat relative at this point. Compatriot seems too honourable. Cohort implied working together. Perhaps, rival was the most appropriate word at this point.

"Mr. Withers," Hermione said stonily. "That will be 15 points from Gryffindor for your combined prank war that has managed to steal about fifty pairs of fellow students' shoes and socks off their feet. You will have detention tonight with Mr. Filch, whom I am sure will be happy to teach you the meaning of a clean hallway."

She stared down at him without a change in expression. "And you, Mr. Raffordy, five points from Gryffindor for your atrocious language where countless people could have heard you."

"Yes, Professor," they chimed together, casting their eyes down.

"All is fair in love and war, children," she said with a sniff, "but keep your wars out of the hallways of Hogwarts. Away with you, before you are late to your next class and get even more trouble for your House."

The two students scurried away like rats trying to flee a sinking ship.

Hermione rolled her eyes as she continued to walk down the no longer glued floor. She waved her wand, and a trail of shoes and socks followed her. She guided them all into a transfigured box at the entranceway to the Great Hall. She etched in the air a sign stating: _Reclaim your shoes and socks here_. To make things easier for all involved, she put a _scourgify_ and a minty fresh charm on the pile of lost footwear to make it less fatal for those looking to find their lost items.

Hermione continued her walk down towards the dungeons, her feet guiding her way down the spiralling stair case on auto-pilot. She rarely even bothered looking where she was going, often finding herself deep in thought as her feet simply went where she wanted to go. As days went, this day had become one of the days she wondered if there was any such thing as a peaceful day at Hogwarts. There were some nights she swore the full moon was shining, and every single student had become strangely infected with howling lycanthropy. Today, while better than the night of the howling students, seemed strangely off. Students were acting like they were in a perpetual hangover, glue infested corridors, friends engaging in prank wars to win the "fair maiden" were all on the list of oddities.

As she opened the door to the Potions classroom, her eyebrows shot directly past her hairline and went straight to the moon, not even bothering to pass go to collect two hundred galleons.

"Severus," she whispered. It was a question and so much more.

Severus was sprawled in the middle of his classroom, pinned down by about a hundred or more life-sized figurines of himself. He was so pinned down by the weight that he couldn't even move to fetch his wand. His very irritated expression told her that he had been engaged in the Severus pile for a bit too long for comfort.

Hermione waved her wand, making a face that was torn between disbelief and ludicrous laughter. All of the effigies vanished save one, which she set at the front of the classroom to stand by the chalkboard.

Severus Snape stood up from where he had been pinned, a saturnine expression on his face.

"I thought my day was bad," Hermione said softly, approaching him.

Severus' lip curled up in antipathy, showing a bit of his yellow teeth. "Apparently someone rigged my demonstration cauldron to spawn effigies of whoever touched it next," the disgruntled Potion Master grunted. He shrugged to set his robes back into place over his shoulders, tilting his head to make his hair fall back into a somewhat messy place.

"And I thought the corridor turned to glue was impressive," Hermione grunted.

Severus' eyebrow went into his hair. Curiosity was something they shared. He sniffed, seemingly in boredom, but Hermione knew he was waiting for something.

Hermione came up to him and snuggled up to him, placing her arms around him and laying her head against his chest. His arms went around her, pulling her to him with a tug as he enfolded her. He sighed softly as his face pressed into her hair. His breath tickled her ear, and she smelled the hint of his favourite tea on his breath.

Severus grunted. "Since our days have been equally outstanding, Professor Snape, perhaps you would spare some time to walk with me around Black Lake. Perhaps the squid will try to drag us to our mutual deaths."

"That's what I love about you, Severus," Hermione said with a twitch of her mouth. "You're so overbearingly romantic."

Severus sniffed. "We all have our gifts," he replied. He held out his arm.

Hermione looped her arm through his. "I would love to."

The Potion Master stared into her face with his dark eyes. He drew his hand across her cheek. "Insufferable witch."

Hermione beamed at him. "All yours."

He pressed his lips to hers in a kiss. "As it should be."


End file.
